Questioning the Social Norms Approach for Alcohol Reduction in First-Year Undergraduate Students–A Canadian Perspective

Abstract

The social norms approach to changing excessive drinking behaviour is predicated upon findings that overestimations of peer drinking predict one’s own drinking behaviour. Prior studies have yet to examine whether such social norms effects pertain equally to both genders. First-year students from a Canadian university (N = 1,155; 696 males, 459 females) were assessed for the relationship between misperceived drinking norms and hazardous drinking using the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Consumption scale (AUDIT-C). A significant positive relationship between the overestimated drinking frequency norm and hazardous drinking was determined for female students, where the odds of hazardous drinking increased by 1.92 (95% CI: 1.32–2.79) when the norm of other female students was overestimated. A non-significant association was found for male students, where the odds of hazardous drinking were unrelated to overestimation of the drinking norm of other male students. The null association for male students highlights a potential problem when using social norms interventions for alcohol reduction for males in the university context. Implications of these results for the utilization of the social norms approach to alcohol reduction are discussed.